I. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a methods and systems for providing a visualization graph on a computer.
II. Background Information
Visualization graphs are tools that allow data to be handled and displayed on a display device according to certain criteria. The primary objective of navigation graphs is to display systems of complex interrelationships between entities, such as in a database or on the World Wide Web. Visualization graphs can be based on a semantic net including all entity types that occur where the considered entities are linked to each other by various kinds of relations. A visualization graph represents entities as boxes, often referred to as “nodes” of the graph, and relations as lines between the boxes.
A common way of solving the problem of graphical layout is to apply a physical simulation where all entities are treated as masses repulsing each other and the relations are treated as elastic lines trying to pull connected entities together. By double-clicking on a box, other entities that are directly related to the corresponding entity (but which may not yet in the graph) and their relations to other entities in the graph are included. In some implementations the double-clicked entity then moves to the center of the graph (it becomes the “focus” entity) and other nodes, which are too distant (measured in number of relations on the shortest path) from it are removed from the graph.
However, conventional visualization graphs suffer drawbacks. One problem with conventional visualization graphs is that the user can only see a certain number of entities at once and thus potentially misses important related entities. This is limiting in terms of the information the user can acquire from the system. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to address the problems encountered in conventional visualization graphs. In particular, the present invention provides for selection and visualization of relevant connections within complex interrelationships, for example in a semantic net, in a graph, in a flexible manner, allowing the display to be used in an efficient manner.